2017 TGDF Notes: Survival Rules for Game Software Engineers

Speaker | Rayark Games | Alvin Chung

Alvin Chung is the CTO and co-founder of Rayark. He worked on front-end and back-end development for games including Implosion, VOEZ, Sdorica, and Soul of Eden. He also helped plan development processes and build internal infrastructure for Rayark’s game software development.

─ Excerpted from TGDF official

These are personal notes and may not fully represent the original speaker’s intent.

Other articles in this series

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• 2017 TGDF Notes: Finding a Path in a Crowded Market
• 2017 TGDF Notes: Making the Future Present Through Rez Infinite
• 2017 TGDF Notes: Lanota Development Experience
• 2017 TGDF Notes: Postmortem on What Went Right and Wrong
• 2017 TGDF Notes: The Art Direction of Detention
• 2017 TGDF Notes: Visual Design Notes from Qubot
• 2017 TGDF Notes: Survival Rules for Game Software Engineers

Responsibilities

• Ensure code quality
• Build an efficient and friendly development environment
• Recruit and train talent

Programmer ratio

Roughly 3X programmers out of 14X total staff, or about 20%.

Deemo program architecture

Engineering career

• Coding skill
• Knowledge
• Direction

Coding skill

• Object-oriented programming (Java / C# / C++)
  • Single Responsibility Principle
  • Open Close Principle
  • Liskov’s Substitution Principle
  • Interface Segregation Principle
  • Dependency Inversion Principle
• Functional programming (Python / JavaScript / Go)
  • Pure Function
  • Immutable State
  • Function Composition
  • Avoid shared state
  • Avoid side effects
• Onion design

• Abstract design: interfaces should express intent, not implementation.

Knowledge

• GC (Garbage Collection)
  • Heap
  • Boxing
  • Value type
  • Reference type
• Trial and error vs. best solution
• Systematic learning
  • Algorithms/data structures
  • Computer architecture
  • Operating systems
  • Network architecture
  • Graphics rendering
  • Software engineering
  • Systems and signals
• Learning on the job
• Engine familiarity
• Learning new things

Direction

• Do not forget the nature of engineering work.

Being passionate about games is a double-edged sword. If you are not careful, you end up only discussing game content and neglecting engineering fundamentals.

• Become an expert.

Other notes

• Time must be spent on program architecture planning, project maintenance, function expansion, and team understanding.
• Architecture planning process: sample code -> architecture documentation -> code review.

Attribution

Please credit ARKAI Studio and link back to this article when quoting or reposting.